The Mock Trial
by StoryTruths
Summary: for english class. revised. oneshot. disclaimer; i don't own it!


December, 1942

I looked around and all I could see was stone. I knew I shouldn't have been there. None of us should've been there. And most of us didn't want to be there. The expression on Phineas' face was so full of anguish and pain it made the inside of me as cold as the outside, and the look in Gene's eyes was enough to make me put my knees to the breeze and head for the hills. I would have done anything; enlisted, got on a train home, swam through the Naguamsett, _anything_, to get away from the look in Gene's eyes. He looked like he was dying, or like he was going to kill, or like he was raising a storm with him mind that no one would see until it hit.

I shivered on the bench, and the shiver turned to a violent shake that racked my body up and down until I was not so much sitting on the bench as I was dancing on it. Chet Douglas, to my left, put his hand on my elbow and shot me a look that clearly said _get a grip_. I looked Chet up and down. His brown hair didn't look brown tonight, it looked grey. He looked old. This young boy, so talented, so innocent, so full of life, carried the look of an old man.

They all looked old. Phineas looked close to one hundred, Gene looked dead. Brinker was the only one who looked slightly normal, but seemed to age as the night wore on. I thought about how I must have been aging. I thought about how, sitting here on this stone bench in December, I was losing years and years of my life. I tried to focus on the trial as my body stopped shaking. I listened as Phineas and Gene and Leper all made different statements about how Phineas broke his leg.

Leper, poor Leper. Elwin. I remember him before the war; so much _life_. Of course, he was always estranged, always ostracized. But he had so much spirit, and he was so intelligent. Before the war. Not now. I watched his face change as he spoke, watched his eyes go in and out of focus, watched his jaw slacken and stiffen. I listened to his voice change, pitching up and down and increasing and decreasing in volume like a ship in a storm. He was so broken now. Broken, but on the inside where Phineas was broken on the outside.

I studied Phineas for a moment, taking in the tired look in his eyes and the furious stance of his mangled body. I didn't attempt to glance at Gene; at this point I knew I really would start running if I caught his gaze.

What they were saying was not important. I knew it wasn't important, and so did most of these boys. It was only Brinker who seemed to care. It wasn't important. How Phineas broke his leg was irrelevant. Whether he was pushed or not was irrelevant. I didn't care, Phineas didn't care, Gene didn't care.

Yet here we were, in a room of stone, aging and aching and waiting for this to end. When Phineas began to yell I checked back into the scene before me, although I tried to pretend I wasn't there. I hear him yell, I saw him cry.

Bowing my head, I began to cry too. I cried because Leper had lost his mind. I cried because Phineas had broken his leg. I cried because I was sitting on cold stone in the middle of the night without a friend, watching adolescent boys beat each other to death with their ignorance and stubbornness.

I watched Phineas try to run, I heard him fall, I knew it was done. He had grown too old, he had been beaten too many times. I heard him fall, and the crash sounded like thunder. Thunder from the storm Gene had been brewing in his mind.

The crash echoed, and the room darkened, and I felt the world turning under my feet as I stood there, watching Gene's face. I let my tears fall. I watched as his face changed from shock to anger to guilt to a kind of cold, numb kind of hurt, all in a split second.

I focused on that last emotion I had seen on his face, and suddenly I felt it too. A cold, empty fog, like sleet or grey skies with no rain or being alone too long. I watched as Gene sank into it; I felt myself slipping into the emptiness as well.

I aged a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand years.

I heard a second echo of Phineas' fall, and the dull thud resonated off the marble, sinking into my flesh, my bone, my heart.

Gene hung his head. Phineas lay there like a rag doll on the stair. Chet stood near the door looking stricken. Brinker never moved from his place near the pulpit.

And as for me, I straightened up; I raised my head when Gene could not, I moved my legs when Phineas could not. I didn't stop my tears; I cried for everyone who wasn't crying. I made my way to the marble archway across the door, neatly sidestepped Phineas' broken body, and I drifted away into a starless night, carried by a fog that flowed from my head and my heart.


End file.
